Preparing for the Worst

By this stage, Panthers’ management believed it had three realistic contingency options. Their aim was to have each sufficiently developed before the NRL announced which clubs would survive. ¹

One option was to negotiate a favourable merger with another club — a merger that would be a true partnership with equal rights. Half the home games would have to be played in Penrith and the team would have to be called Panthers. Years of consistent marketing had established Panthers as one of the club’s strongest commercial assets, giving it value in any merger negotiations.

Another option was to buy the naming rights of another club. It would have been little consolation to Panther supporters to have a Melbourne Panthers or a St George Panthers, but from a purely commercial point of view it would have been better than having the Panther brand completely eliminated from the competition.

The other option was to prepare for a legal fight based on the fraudulent activities of some clubs in their claims under the criteria. How could the criteria be used for selection if it could be proved that several clubs had blatantly cheated? And Panthers had that proof². There were difficulties with this strategy. Court proceedings are inherently uncertain and can take years to resolve. Panthers would almost certainly have been excluded from the competition during that period, making the option financially and operationally damaging.

Although very different in their execution, each option had the same objective.

Management was not searching for reasons to abandon Panthers’ identity. Quite the opposite. Every proposal was an attempt to preserve the Panthers brand and ensure the club remained part of the national competition if the selection criteria ultimately went against them.

If exclusion proved unavoidable, management believed an equal-rights merger offered the best opportunity to preserve both the Panthers identity and a continuing presence in the national competition. But it would be difficult.  A merger could be stalled as long as possible, but the negotiations should not be left so late that they had to be rushed and driven by the desperation of any final decision to cut Panthers. 

The combination of Penrith and Panthers had brought valuable publicity to the city and a strong word association. The loss of that association became one of the strongest objections by those who opposed a merger. From management point of view it was better to salvage the Panthers brand than to finish with nothing at all. To some people, though, nothing at all was better than linking Panthers with another locality.

For management, preserving some future for Panthers was preferable to risking no future at all. For many supporters, however, the very thought of compromise was unacceptable.

There was also an inconsistency in the arguments of some. In their early days with Super League, the Board and management had been discussing the marketing disadvantages of the name Penrith Panthers. 

Some surveys had indicated that having Penrith in the name was detracting from support in nearby population centres such as St Marys, Mt Druitt, and Blacktown. Geographically, these should have been areas of support. Penrith junior league extended as far as Blacktown. Many players were coming out of those areas, yet many people from those areas supported other teams. The Board decided that it might help build support if a name were chosen that allowed people to believe they were supporting a team representative of their own area.

The unanimous decision of the Board was to register the name, ‘Western Sydney Panthers’.

Early in 1998, Cowan and football club CEO Mark Levy began to look closely at the merger possibilities. Options included Western Suburbs, Parramatta, and Balmain. Geographical remoteness was against a merger with Balmain, and for Wests, Canterbury seemed a more suitable choice.  However, the club did have discussions with Western Suburbs.

If the club were forced to merge, Parramatta had to be the most logical choice. It was geographically perfect and the combined strengths of Parramatta and Penrith would have created the most powerful club in the competition. 

Penrith had twelve months to compete for points. Two clubs – the Hunter Mariners and the South Queensland
Crushers – had already dipped out, leaving 20 teams vying for 14 places. 

Denis Fitzgerald agrees. He says that the Parramatta club’s preferred choice for a merger was Balmain.

They were going to struggle to make the criteria, and their district boundary comes to the Clyde/Carlingford railway line here, so it’s quite close to us. A lot of people who live around the Ryde area might support both Parramatta and Balmain. But some of the old Balmain stalwarts felt that we were too strong. I was disappointed when it fell down. I thought maybe Penrith would be too strong themselves, but there could have been a great future in a joint venture with Penrith.

If it had happened, it was going to dominate the whole of western Sydney and all those growth areas. Although there’s some growth in the south-west, the biggest area stretches from Granville/Rydalmere to the lower Blue Mountains. It is a massive area. Commercially, it had great sense, but it was football, where so many positions are not based on logical, commercial reality, but on emotion and tradition — and that’s what ultimately happened.’

Parramatta was interested in a joint venture for a number of reasons but had not made any decision other than to investigate the various options.

The Parramatta Chairman, Alan Overton, sent a letter to his club’s members outlining his reasons for considering the move. In part, it said:

I think all keen, long term Eels fans, like myself, would love the club to continue as we have for the past 50 years, and continue to be the Parramatta Eels, playing at Parramatta Stadium. But … whether we like it or not, there will be only 14 teams in the NRL in 2000.

He went on to say that,

… boards cannot afford to adopt a narrow minded or blinkered approach to joint ventures but rather should attempt to be as objective and professional as possible.

Although their club was safely ensconced in the fourteen, the Parramatta board saw benefits in a merger. The new league administrators were offering major incentives for teams to merge, both on a financial level and in various guarantees. Increased supporter base, sponsorship and gate receipts would be additional benefits. At that time there was great uncertainty about the potential for stand-alone clubs to compete with the joint ventures for more than a few years. Even clubs certain of selection, such as Parramatta, had the nagging doubt that their survival might be for the short term only. Parramatta was taking the responsible course examining all options for its future.

Fitzgerald said the early talks with Cowan were very informal, just chatting more than real discussions.

Roger was concerned with their position — making the criteria. They were in the worst position of any of the Super League franchises. When the curtain went down after one year of Super League and the NRL was formed, Penrith was in a pretty weak position.

For us, it was certainly about the money, and the risk. We had all spent money, but the ARL clubs had never had the type of subsidies that Super League had given its franchises. That funding was now being chopped off with the NRL starting.

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